Anthropic Alleges Industrial-Scale AI Distillation, Amazon’s $200B AI Spend, Google’s Gemini Reasoning Shift, and Altman’s Water/Energy Claims
:Jim Love hosts Hashtag Trending, and highlights updates to TechNewsDay.ca/.com including a new “Best of YouTube” section for curated tech channels. Anthropic alleges three Chinese AI labs—DeepSeek, Moonshot, and MiniMax—ran industrial-scale distillation campaigns to extract capabilities from Claude models using proxy services and “Hydra cluster” networks with tens of thousands of fraudulent accounts, prompting Anthropic to strengthen identity controls and detection with cloud partners. Amazon shares fall for nine straight sessions after investors react to plans for roughly $200B in 2026 capex largely for AI infrastructure, raising questions about ROI and future free cash flow. A cited analysis by YouTuber Nate B Jones argues Google’s Gemini 3.1 Pro signals a strategy shift toward deeper reasoning (not just coding/agentic tools), noting a 77.1% ARC-AGI-2 score and DeepMind’s scientific problem focus, contrasting OpenAI’s product/distribution, Anthropic’s agentic coordination, and Google’s “pure intelligence” approach. The episode also references Citri Research’s 2028 scenario planning report outlining a plausible fast-arriving AGI chain reaction—falling inference costs, rapid adoption, labor displacement pressure, and geopolitical competition for compute and talent—and promotes the Saturday show Project Synapse on long-term AI trajectories. Finally, Love discusses Sam Altman’s comments at the India AI Impact Summit dismissing viral claims about ChatGPT water and energy use without providing specific counter-numbers, noting growing public backlash as data center water and electricity demands rise; the full interview is linked in show notes.
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LINKS
Nate B Jones on Google Gemimi 3.1
Sam Altman’s speach
AI Scenario
https://www.citriniresearch.com/p/2028gic
00:00 Headlines and intro
00:54 Site updates and YouTube picks
01:57 Anthropic warns of distillation
04:58 Amazon AI spending jitters
06:13 Google bets on reasoning
10:31 2028 AGI crisis scenario
11:55 Altman backlash and resources
14:17 Wrap up and sponsor thanks
